Chinese Bloggers Score a Victory Against the Government

On Friday, Chinese authorities announced that four Communist Party, local government and security officials in Guizhou province’s Weng’an county were sacked for “severe malfeasance” over the alleged coverup of a murder, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Initially, police said high-school student Li Shufen drowned, angering people who believe she was raped and murdered, perhaps by children of local officials. Even on Wednesday, the provincial party chief, Shi Zongyuan, had brushed off protests over the incident — protests that Xinhua said involved some 30,000 people — as being “used and incited by very few people with ulterior motives.”

But with the announcement of the firings on Friday, he said the local officials’ “rude and rough-handed solutions” in dealing with local issues had caused the riot, according to Xinhua.